1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information-processing system, an information-processing apparatus, a processing execution apparatus, an information-processing method, and a program stored in a computer-readable recording medium. More specifically, the invention relates to an information-processing system causing a plurality of processing execution apparatuses to execute a plurality of kinds of processing for one kind of data, an information-processing apparatus and a processing execution apparatus that constitute the information-processing system, an information-processing method executed in the information-processing apparatus and the processing execution apparatus, and a program stored in a computer-readable recording medium and executed in the information-processing apparatus and the processing execution apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, improved network techniques have made it common to connect a plurality of information-processing apparatuses such as computers and image-forming apparatuses to networks. For this form of use, a technique is being developed for causing a small load apparatus among the plurality of information-processing apparatuses to execute processing. Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 11-316665, for example, describes the following technique. A work station makes a print demand to printers registered into a group. A printer that has received the print demand inquires the work station about printability when the printing portion of the printer becomes available. Inquired about printability, the work station, when the object job is still not printed by any other printers, makes a response denoting the object job as printable and causes the inquiring printer to print the object job. When the object job is already printed by any of the other printers, the work station makes a response denoting the print job as unprintable. Thus, a small load printer among the plurality of printers is caused to print a job.
In the technique described in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 11-316665, however, the first printer to make an inquiry for printability is caused to execute all the processing defined by the print job even when the print job defines a plurality of kinds of processing, and no consideration is paid by the publication to the case where the printer is unable to execute some of the plurality of kinds of processing defined by the print job, or to distributing the load of the plurality of kinds of processing defined by the print job. In addition, when the work station, which makes the print job, receives an inquiry about printability from the printer, the work station needs to check out the state of the print job to make a response denoting the printability of the print job. Thus, problems occurred including an increase in load against the work station making the print job.